Rajkumar Hirani

Early career

Hirani tried his luck as a film editor for many years. Bad experiences forced him to shift to advertising,^[9] and he gradually established himself as a director and producer of advertising films. He was also seen in a Fevicol ad where some men and elephants were trying to pull and break a Fevicol plank, saying "Jor laga ke Haisha".^[10] He was also seen in the Kinetic Luna ad campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather.

He was doing fairly well in the advertisement industry, but he wanted to make movies, so he took a break from advertisement and started working with Vidhu Vinod Chopra. He worked on promos and trailers for 1942: A Love Story.^[11] He edited promotions for Kareeb.^[12] He got his first big opportunity as a film editor with Mission Kashmir.^[13]

Munnabhai MBBS and afterwards

Rajkumar Hirani's first directorial venture was Munnabhai MBBS (2003), starring Sanjay Dutt, which is considered a cult classic.^[14] It broke all formulaic conventions associated with Bollywood films. Made on a budget of Rs. 55 million, it was a huge hit worldwide and took a distributor share of Rs. 25 million from the Indian market.^[15] His second directorial effort was the 2006 Lage Raho Munnabhai, which had a strong cultural impact in India, popularising Gandhism under Munna Bhai's notion of Gandhigiri. The film won widespread critical acclaim from critics and had a number of prominent screenings.

His third film was the comedy 3 Idiots, starring Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Omi Vaidya, Parikshit Sahni and Boman Irani. It was released on 25 December 2009 and was well received by the critics. It became the highest grosser in Indian cinema, shattering all records across Indian and overseas markets. The film was later remade in different languages.^[16]

His fourth film was the alien satirical drama PK, which starred Aamir Khan, Saurabh Shukla and Anushka Sharma and Sanjay Dutt in the lead roles. It was released on 19 December 2014, broke existing records in India and became the highest grossing Indian film, collecting over Rs.500 crore at the box office.^[17][18] PK was the first Indian film to gross more than ₹7 billion^{[19][20][21][22]} and US$100 million worldwide.^{[23][24][25][26]}

Hirani's fifth film was Sanju, a biopic on Sanjay Dutt, with Ranbir Kapoor playing Dutt's role.^[27] Hirani and his co-writer Abhijat Joshi wrote the screenplay.^[28] The film released on 29 June 2018.^[29] It received generally positive reviews from critics, but was criticised for its supposed image cleansing of its protagonist. Sanju became one of the highest-grossing movies of year 2018 and also one of the highest grossing Indian films.